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Are You Ready For A Career Disruption?

Larry Boyer founded Success Rockets to help people and businesses prepare for and adapt to disruption so they can thrive. Are you ready?

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We tend to move through our daily lives as if everything will stay the same or, at the very least, as if we'll experience gradual change that is easy to absorb. Nowhere is this approach more personally perilous than with our careers.

While we certainly don’t want to be obsessed with the possibility of losing our jobs at any moment, ignoring the risk can lead to disastrous results. More serious than a job loss is a career disruption in which you are unable to find work in the same industry or level that you were at before your job loss.

There is a lot of talk about how technology can disrupt your career plans and even result in losing your job. But there are still many reasons besides robots that might lead to you losing your job that you really should pay attention to as well. Between colleagues, friends and even myself, I have seen every one of these:

• Mergers, acquisitions and restructures

• Corporate mismanagement and malfeasance

• Health

• Natural disaster

• Politics and the economy

Think it can’t happen to you? The truth is, no matter what the reason, that there is a good chance you will experience an employment disruption at some point in your career. In fact, my own career was disrupted before it even started. As a newly minted college graduate, I spent the first six months of my career unemployed as a series of government shutdowns stalled public- and private-sector hiring across the D.C. region. Ultimately, I was fortunate to find a great position in a field I had never even heard of: housing finance. But this is not an isolated example. Some of the statistics might surprise you.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), about 20 million Americans lose their job each year due to layoffs, restructurings or the company going out of business. These job losses could be the result of changes in the economy or reducing redundancies after mergers, acquisitions or restructurings to remain competitive.

According to the Council for Disability Awareness, every year, approximately 5.6% of working Americans will suffer a short-term disability for six months or less. Many people don’t realize when they cross that threshold from short-term disability to long-term disability. When that happens, your employment is typically terminated.

Natural disasters are much harder to predict and vary widely. According to BLS, following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, job losses hit 105,300 by November: “Ten months after the hurricane, in June 2006, the over-the-year job loss had diminished to 92,900. The loss in wages during the 10 months following Katrina was approximately $2.9 billion, with 76% of it, or $2.2 billion, associated with the private sector.” On a smaller scale, there are floods, tornados, fires, mudslides, snow storms, earthquakes and even volcanos that can disrupt your work and life. Property damage gets a lot of the press, but there is often significant employment damage that comes with disaster as well.

When Enron collapsed, over 20,000 people suddenly lost their jobs and their pensions. A short time later, over 80,000 employees of Enron’s independent auditor, Arthur Anderson, also found themselves looking for work as Anderson was taken down in the scandal as well. That’s 100,000 jobs wiped out over the course of a few months. Most of the people involved didn't see it coming.

Politics can suddenly change the fortunes of many companies and their employees too. Beyond government shutdowns, laws and regulations both create and destroy job opportunities. Recently, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce estimated that the Trump Administration’s tariffs for aluminum and steel could result in the loss of 2.6 million jobs (subscription required). Whether or not the tariffs are imposed and jobs are lost, this is only a recent example of political decisions that impact certain jobs for better or worse, depending on which way the political winds blow and what impact they will have on you.

Why Wait For Disruption?

Financial planners will say you should have 6-12 months' worth of savings in an emergency fund to help you through such times. While it's a good starting point, it’s not sufficient. It just helps you pay your bills while doing nothing to help you find your next opportunity. And you’ll want to find an opportunity soon since the longer you are unemployed, the more difficult it is to land a job.

The best approach is to prepare yourself before you find yourself out of work, while you still have the time, money and emotional presence to make solid preparations. These preparations can make a world of difference in your mindset and ability to take action after a career disruption.

One client I worked with was shocked that when he lost his job, he was actually happy. He was now free to do what he really wanted to do -- he had been afraid to give up a “safe” job to pursue it. He sold his home, moved across the country and started his own business.

It all starts with understanding what is important to you professionally and personally. Cut through all the day-to-day obligations, the mindless doing of tasks and compromises. It’s about getting to the core of The Business of You. What are your values? What impact do you want to have on other people? What skills motivate and demotivate you? How or where can you bring the best of you to bring value to others and get paid?

Understanding this is easier said than done. It takes time, effort and a clear mind. Start now -- before you have to -- and you’ll be ready.